McLaren_Field wrote:The answer to that is - Do what your predecessors used to do - give them a five year contract that neither of you can opt out of for frivolous reasons and make sure there is a transferable qualification at the end of it, treat them reasonably, don't act like a tw*t towards them, and you'd be surprised just how many of them stay with you until the day you all retire.
Short term employment and high staff turnover didn't start with the employees, its expensive and its disruptive and the best employers keep their staff and keep the secret of how they keep their staff.
The various Industry Training Boards were (by & large) great institutions. Funded through an industry levy, they became persona non grata when some of the bigger companies, that by extension contributed more, complained to government about this "needless cost" on their business. As each board fell away, so training also reduced, even at the macro-company level. IIRC the Construction Industry Training Board is the only one still in existence.
There has been a driven agenda to de-skill as much of the workforce as possible. This may have the short-term effect of reducing labour costs but it invariably presents problems because those left in the workforce do not possess the skills to tackle any "out of the ordinary" problem. Those who may have the ability to do so have usually been put out to pasture, so the solution then is to buy-in "expertise", usually at exhorbitant cost to the business. - Short-termism again.
Take the vehicle repair business as an example: 30 years ago a lad would be apprenticed, he would study at night school & day release tech college and once qualified, he would be a competent technician and was called a "fitter". Now we have someone who receives training on a diagnostics machine, identifies a problem component and fits a new part. For some reason, he is now called a technician.
